DH was reading over my shoulder and reminded me of his dear Grandmother. As she got older, she got more and more frugal about food and she also got a little dotty. One Christmas in her later years, she cooked the entire feast and was so proud because she made oyster dressing. But you know how expensive oysters are. Fish is just the same, right? And she had some fish sticks in the freezer (note: they were well beyond the expiration date and were pretty freezer burned), so she used those instead. But didn't adjust the baking time at all. So they had frozen fish-stick flavored dressing. Shudder.

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Lynn

"Anyone who considers protocol unimportant has never dealt with a cat." Robert A. Heinlein

- the pressure cooker that blew its seal and sprayed pig juice all over the kitchen. The kitchen was never so clean after we were done. The pets helped and we knew where we'd missed by noticing where they were still licking.

- the bottle of syrup that fell off the top of the fridge, popped open when it hit the counter, bounced back up in a beautiful pirouette and sprayed syrup everywhere

- dropping a full bowl of gravy so that it fell perfectly bottom-down onto the floor, causing a circular tidal wave (why are our pets getting fatter anyway?)

"Lots of nutmeg" means different things to different people. Specifically it means a lot less nutmeg to a German lady born in the twenties than a Brit born in the seventies. It certainly doesn't mean a whole grated nutmeg...

I found out a few months back that it is actually possible to have nutmeg poisoning - not from personal experience, but from auditing ER records which had reason for attendance on them. I asked one of the doctors present who stated that yes, nutmeg can be quite toxic in anything other than 'sprinkle on your dessert' doses.

One of my many kitchen disasters. Julian, aged around 10, learning to bake - at the time in the holiday house with the slow combustion wood oven.

The sponge cake was lovely and light - and looked like 2 pancakes joined with jam and cream. Two teaspoons of flour isn't the same as two tablespoons.

The scones I was sure were done, but Mother Dearest who never baked a thing in her life but knew so much better, insisted they needed another 5 minutes. Yup, burnt, charred little lumps... they tasted pretty good once the char was knocked off though!

Well, there was the time I was sorting my stamp collection on the kitchen table, right next to the oven. My mom was taking the Thanksgiving turkey out of the oven when the pan slipped and it dropped a little. Nothing wrong there, nothing broken, but... This created a little gust of wind, the stamps flew up and landed right on the turkey. I still have the grease-stained stamps somewhere around here. The gravy came out great, BTW.

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Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bow lines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover. -Mark Twain

Well, there was the time I was sorting my stamp collection on the kitchen table, right next to the oven. My mom was taking the Thanksgiving turkey out of the oven when the pan slipped and it dropped a little. Nothing wrong there, nothing broken, but... This created a little gust of wind, the stamps flew up and landed right on the turkey. I still have the grease-stained stamps somewhere around here. The gravy came out great, BTW.

Somehow, I suspect there is not enough postage in the world to let you mail a turkey.

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"I think her scattergun was only loaded with commas and full-stops, although some of them cuddled together for warmth and produced little baby colons and semi-colons." ~ Margo

This wasn't a huge disaster, but about ten years ago I saw a recipe for pasta with a lemon cream sauce. It sounded good, and I followed the recipe to the letter. The sauce curdled, and it smelled and tasted disgusting.

I currently have stiches in my foot and have to keep it elevated, so I can only observe the disaster 5 feet from me.

DD made some absolutely delicious Eggs Benedict for the family.She wasn't hungry earlier so she waited for the second (and final) batch before serving herself.

She made a lovely plate of breakfast and got a tray to eat in front of the TV. (Yeah, we do that a lot.)Picked up the tray to re-position it and the plate slipped off, flipping upside down while falling and dumping everything on the living room carpet.

My living room has a yellow, gooey splatter in the middle if it.The two eggs and the yellow spray look like Big Bird had a toileting incident.There is hollandaise sauce on the couch, the footstool and in a crime-scene worthy spray pattern all over the floor.

DH, DS and DD scrubbed it, but the yellow marks remain. They spray treated and it looks like they'll have to rent a carpet cleaner.

Anyone know how to get hollandaise sauce out of carpet??

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"I think her scattergun was only loaded with commas and full-stops, although some of them cuddled together for warmth and produced little baby colons and semi-colons." ~ Margo

I'm usually a decent enough chef, but I'm also incredibly easily distracted. I also like to feed begging animals scraps. This combination resulted in me one night absentmindedly adding the freshly chopped chilly to a hot wok containing only oil and copious amounts of garlic, thereby napalming the everloving Beezus out of myself and the dog. Seriously, a huge cloud rose like a phoenix from the wok, and all my mind did was go "bad move, Nora" before going uselessly and utterly blank. Then the burning started. Dh came running to see what the screams where about and encountered the dog blindly running into walls trying to get out of the kitchen, with me chanting "stupid, stupid, stupid" with my face under the tap, and while he's standing there wondering what we're carrying on about the cloud reaches the doorway.

I do believe we had sandwiches and ointment for dinner that night.

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Just because someone is offended that does not mean they are in the right.